That thing you left unfinished is still running in the background
Have you ever noticed how an unfinished task follows you around like a shadow?
You could be watching a movie, playing with your kid, or sitting down for dinner. And somewhere in the back of your head, that half-written email or that pending decision keeps humming. You didn’t choose to think about it. It just showed up.
I’ve felt this more times than I can count. During my last few months in corporate, I had a running list of things I wanted to do for my coaching business. Content ideas, frameworks to build, a channel to set up. None of it was urgent. All of it was incomplete.
And every single one of those items occupied mental real estate, even on days when I was supposed to be focused on my day job.
It turns out there’s a name for this.
The Insight
In the late 1920s, a Lithuanian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik noticed something interesting. She was sitting at a restaurant and observed that waiters could remember complex orders for tables that hadn’t been served yet. But the moment the food was delivered and the bill was paid, they forgot everything. The open order stayed alive in their memory. The closed one vanished.
This became the Zeigarnik Effect: our brains hold on to unfinished or interrupted tasks more strongly than completed ones. The incomplete task creates a kind of mental tension, and the brain keeps it active, searching for closure.
Think about it in your own life.
That book you stopped reading halfway. That course you signed up for and never finished. That conversation you’ve been meaning to have with someone but keep postponing. All of these are open loops. And each one is consuming bandwidth in the background.
This is why some evenings feel heavy even when the day wasn’t particularly hard. The weight often comes from what you left undone. The tasks still sitting there, waiting.
Now here’s the interesting part. Too many open loops drain you over time. And yet, that same pull to finish something can become a powerful force for momentum when you use it intentionally. Because that nagging feeling, that pull to go back and complete something, is your brain trying to close the pattern. And if you channel it right, it becomes fuel.
As a coach, I see this show up all the time. Clients come in feeling stuck, overwhelmed, scattered. When we start unpacking, it’s rarely one big problem. It’s a pile of small, unfinished things. An unresolved conflict at work. A goal they announced but never acted on. A decision they’ve been sitting on for months. Each one adding to the noise.
The moment they close even one of those loops, something shifts. The mental fog lifts a little. Energy returns. Focus sharpens. Closing one loop gives them the momentum to close the next.
The Practice
This week, try something simple. Write down every unfinished task, decision, or conversation that’s been sitting in your head. Don’t filter. Don’t prioritise. Just get them out of your brain and onto paper.
Then pick one. The smallest one. The one you can close today or tomorrow. Send that message. Finish that chapter. Make that call. Cancel that plan you were never going to follow through on anyway.
You’ll notice that the relief isn’t proportional to the size of the task. Even closing something tiny can free up surprising amounts of mental space. Your brain doesn’t distinguish between big and small unfinished business. It just keeps all of it running. The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to start closing tabs, one at a time.
We spend a lot of energy managing what’s in front of us. Sometimes the real drain is what’s behind us, still incomplete, still humming.
Start there.
P.S. If you’re carrying a longer list than you’d like to admit, and you want someone to help you sort through it, I’m here.
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